Notes On The Kitchen Table

Do you remember these sweet messages, querida? Do you remember how you’d leave me something beautiful or funny to read each morning? I do. I miss them. I never thought to tell you that I miss them…I should have.

When and why did we replace these little, honey sweet gestures of tenderness with lists of ‘To Do?’ Is that what we are now…..pages of demands to relentlessly work through?

I mattered then, didn’t I? You saw the lover in me…do you ever catch a glimpse of her these days?

You’d go out running each morning….’roadwork’ you called it, but you’d take a moment to leave a few words for me..that was back in the beginning.

Why didn’t I save them? I should have saved them. I should have coveted them fiercely. Is it too late to claw back that same intensity or has it always been fates intention to mellow and maybe rub out what we felt for one another?

They didn’t take up much room in the drawer. The notes, they didn’t take up much room. I should have saved them. I wish I’d saved them.

You’ve always been the one skilled at creating something beautiful out of words, my attempts, clumsy and full of…what was it you called them? Malapropisms. Malapropisms and dreadful grammar. You’d say it was endearing and tease me mercilessly but it was never said with any malice….never meant to be hurtful.

You’re sleeping now and I’m here, in the kitchen, trying hard to think of the words to give you. It was so much easier in the beginning. They flowed far more naturally. Why is it harder to write this way to you now? Why does it feel awkward, like trying to write with my left hand?

I need you back. Let me try to win you back. You never physically left, but the notes stopped…. slowly, bit by bit, we succumbed to apathy; gave in to the mundane…forgetting the little things….the beautiful things.

Love me the way you did….if you can.

Tonight baby, I ripped up all the lists, threw them in the fire. I sat here with a blank notebook and let myself try for us. Maybe a few words can start to put us back together……..maybe….